Slipped Disc: The Hell of Computers

You'll have to forgive me. I'm distracted. I spent all weekend staring at my laptop, working on a little 10-minute video for my father's 70th birthday party.

I heard it was nice over the weekend. Sunny, was it? Warmish? Flowers blooming, etc.? I didn't see any of it. Instead, I was looking at video and photographs of warm, sunny days from 10, 20, 60 years ago. While you were gardening, riding your bikes, swaying in the hammock, I was scanning old Polaroids and newspaper clippings, easing snapshots out of photo albums, importing VHS and 8mm video into my MacBook. And then putting it all together, adding music, snipping clips to make them fit, looking for music to fit the mood.

Up until midnight last night, I was, my masterpiece complete. And now I can't seem able to burn it onto a DVD. My laptop keeps ejecting the disc before it's done. Talk about a tough critic.

Computer impotence is a particularly horrible sort of impotence. I always feel like if I was just a little bit smarter, I could figure out what the problem is. But I'm not just a little bit smarter. I'm as smart as I am and no more. And so I Google the various error messages I get, about my archive having an error or my QuickDraw being "deprecated." I find message boards where poor souls have had the exact same problem as I, and then try to decipher the suggestions they were given by strangers in the ether.

Do I trust someone in Sweden when he says to "Delete iDVD pref file -- or rather start a new user/account -- log into this and re-try." I don't know what a pref file is or a new user/account. I just want the thing to work. If I'd wanted to tinker, I would have kept my PC.

I have until Thursday to figure this out, then we drive to North Carolina for the party. I suppose if I'm unable to successfully burn a DVD I could gather everyone around my computer, all 60 or 70 people, and press play in iMovie. That seems to work for now.

I called Apple support this morning and he had me make a quick movie with just some clip art and the iSight camera and burn it. No problem. That wouldn't show in my TV's DVD player because it was a double-layer disc. So the tech guy said that's the problem. I should get single layer DVD-R discs. I'll try that, but I'm suspicious that it could be so easy a fix.

You might also try slowing down the spin rate on the DVD drive. If it spins too fast it won't record correctly. The default is usually the highest the drive supports (16 times or 16x, or 8x) - setting it down to 2x or 1x usually fixes this.

I hate to say it, but the Apple guy was right. When I used single-layer DVD-Rs it burned just fine. Now, of course, I see things I wished I'd done differently. I think Scorsese felt the same about "The Godfather." Maybe when I do the Pop Pop director's cut....